


Up On the Roof

by debwalsh



Category: Captain America (Movies), Captain America - All Media Types, The Avengers (Marvel Movies), The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types
Genre: F/M, Kissing, M/M, Mutual Pining, Pining, Rooftop confessional, looking for love in all the wrong places
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-09-29
Updated: 2014-09-29
Packaged: 2018-02-19 05:39:07
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,766
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2376800
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/debwalsh/pseuds/debwalsh
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Bucky is back, and his recovery is underway.  Steve reaches a point where he feels he just can't continue the way he is, and seeks solace in the quiet and the solitude of the rooftop of Stark Tower.  He reaches for comfort, for closeness, but instead, he just may find what he's been looking for.</p><p>This is a standalone story.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Up On the Roof

**Author's Note:**

> This started life as a part of Take Up Your Shield and Follow Me, but I realized that there was a key plot point in the overall arc that was in conflict with this particular piece. But I still liked this piece, so I tweaked it to remove the specificd references to events in Take Up Your Shield and Follow Me.
> 
> At this point, Bucky has been recovered and brought to Stark Tower. He's on the slow and long road to recovery. Steve is frustrated and kind of fed up with pining over Bucky, and believes that what he feels is completely one-sided - Bucky will never see him, never feel about him, the way he feels about Bucky. so he escapes to the Tower roof to be alone with his thoughts.

Steve found himself on the uppermost roof of Stark Tower, leaning against the guardrail that circled the level atop a waist-high glass barrier. All of New York City spread out below him, all light and hints of motion, the sky above gauzy from the never quenched haze that was Manhattan. The Chrysler Building glittered nearby. He remembered when the building was under construction, the excitement when it was completed and declared the tallest building in the world. Of course, that had been a short-lived distinction, since the Empire State Building edged it out not even a year later, but it was still a beautiful building, and few ever got to see it up close like this, looking down into the spire of light. 

Studying the graceful arcs of the nearest levels of the Chrysler Building brought a level of calm, a degree of clarity. More importantly, a remoteness, a detachment. 

In the distance, he could see the upward thrust of the new World Trade Center, felt a momentary pang for the violence done to his city, its soul, while he’d slept. He’d awakened to the post-9/11 world, had never seen the towers before they fell. 

So much violence had been visited upon his city. And yet the living heart of it, the sinew and the blood, braced for combat and fought back, thrust a new tower up into the darkness like a fuck you to the heart of the beast. 

_Nothing_ could break the spirit of New York. 

He shook his head and smiled to himself. “Getting old, Rogers. Getting fanciful in your old age,” he whispered to himself. 

A soft swish of fabric on fabric and he heard her separate herself from the darkness. The sound was a deliberate choice – he knew she could move with absolute silence, like vapor, when she chose. So she chose to announce her presence for once, for him. 

“Come here often?” she asked with a quirk to her lips and a smile in her voice. 

“Not often enough. It’s really beautiful up here. I forget this spot is here sometimes. Well, not forget, but too much other … stuff … gets in the way of remembering.” 

“And at night, you can’t see the construction cranes. All you can see is the lights.” 

“And the promise,” Steve whispered. 

“Promise?” 

“Of a new day. The future.” 

A low, throaty chuckle answered him. “Poetic, Rogers.” Like that was somehow what? 

“Hopeful,” he countered, challenging her. 

“Still?” 

“Trying to be.” 

“Hmm.” She slid her arms around his waist and ducked her body under his arm, nestling in comfortably. Steve let his arms circle her, pulling her in tighter and settled his chin on the crown of her head, feeling the softness of her hair against his skin. 

Steve liked the feeling of her tiny body warm against his and turned his face to place a kiss on the top of her head. He pressed his cheek against her hair. “Nat?” 

“Hmmm?” 

“How come you always tried to fix me up? How come you never … how come you never –“ 

“Suggested myself?” 

“Yeah.” 

“Because that would have been too real, Rogers. You know I don’t like being compromised.” 

“Nat –“ 

She reached up then and twined her fingers in his hair, pulling his face down to meet hers, pressing lips together, sure and sweet. Steve responded to the kiss with more enthusiasm than their PDA at the mall before SHIELD fell, and he could feel her grinning suddenly against his lips. “Better, Rogers,” she encouraged softly. 

He grinned back, tightened his arms and lifted her up as her legs circled his waist and he carried her, still kissing. He fell to one knee on the nearest chaise along the inner wall, and gently lowered her to the cushion, chasing her lips with his own as they both stretched out on the lounger. 

Their kisses were slow and sweet and deep, and Natasha’s hands were expert and none too gentle in their exploration of Steve’s body. He knew what a woman felt like, knew what it was to lose himself in soft kisses and sweet scents and subtle curves. His hands grew more sure as he mapped the contours of her body, stretched out and tangled with his, the hard muscle, the delicious softness, the barely in check danger of her. She arched into his touch. 

Finally, they came up for air, gasping in little pleasured pants. 

“See what I mean?” she asked, reaching up and toying with a lock of his hair that had fallen onto his forehead. She smiled that sweet smile that always made him feel like he was in the presence of a predator about to strike, and he was the prey. 

“Yeah,” he agreed breathily, dipping his head to recapture her lips with his own again. Her flattened palm over his heart stopped him and he jerked his head up sharply at that, eyes wide, brow furrowed. “Nat?” 

“I thought it was because you hadn’t kissed anyone since 1945, but I was wrong. It’s because you hadn’t kissed the one you _wanted_ to kiss since 1945. Or is it longer?” she asked, running her thumb across the line of his hairline, smoothing it against his wrinkled forehead. 

“What?” 

“It was very nice. _Very_. But you’re not really here, Steve.” As he started to pull away, she shifted her hands to his shoulders, where she smoothed and soothed. She pulled him close again and whispered in his ear, “I have no objection to taking this further, but I suspect you do. Your heart isn’t here.” 

“I, uh –“ 

“I didn’t realize you were still in mourning. And now you don’t have to be.” 

“It’s not like that. I mean, he’s not. We’re not –“ 

“No?” 

“No.” 

“You’re sure? Because you are pining so loud, they can hear you in Mother Russia, Rogers. And when he looks at you, paint peels off ten miles away.” 

“He’s confused. He, I, we –“ he groaned in frustration. “I can’t take advantage,” he finally admitted. 

“Because he’s compromised.” He nodded. “You’re too good for your own good, Rogers. And whatever’s going on there,” she flicked a finger hard against his skull, “you need help sorting it out. You should talk to that therapist. Or Sam. Or _him_.” 

Steve lifted himself away and propped himself on his forearms bracketing her upper torso. “I didn’t realize anyone could see –“ 

“Hard not to when you’re together. Never guess it’s him otherwise. But when you’re together, it’s a physical thing that’s in the room. You’re like planets in orbit around each other and you can’t escape each other’s gravity. It’s mutual, Rogers. Completely consensual.” 

“Consensual,” Steve repeated flatly. 

“Yeah, he wants it as much as you do. Maybe more.” 

Pain burned through him, not sharp, but a diffuse and enveloping pain that had been his constant companion since that night in 1941 when Bucky had left him standing alone to ship out to Europe, tall and proud and scared out of his mind in his uniform, too young and beautiful to die in a foreign war, but determined to do his bit whatever the future brought. 

The future had brought war and ice and time and distance in between. A gulf too wide to cross in the here and now. Not even finding each other in Italy had bridged that gap, and then a gap of inches, a hand’s breadth of air, had separated them in time and space and pain. 

That they were both here, in the future, was both miracle and curse. To get to this moment, the person he’d loved most in the world had suffered unspeakable horrors, left shards of himself like broken glass through the decades and the continents and the upheaval that forged the world they lived in today. 

He couldn’t celebrate his presence without seeing the crushing reminder of what he’d endured in the blue eyes that stared past him and through him and beyond him, not seeing that he was right there, in arm’s reach. Always, just a touch away. 

“No,” Steve whispered. “Not me.” 

Natasha looked up at him, eyebrows furrowed, and shook her head. “Y’got that wrong, Rogers. It’s you and only you. I suspect it was always that way. Boys in 1945 that dumb?” 

“Was illegal. Mortal sin. Go to Hell if they didn’t arrest you first. Bad things happened.” 

She stared at him for a long, silent moment, then she hugged him, circling his ridiculously muscled body with the coiled strength that was Natasha, drew his head into the crook of her neck, and stroked the back of his neck, his shoulders, his back. He didn’t realize he was crying until he heard her whisper, “It’s okay. I’ve got you. You’re safe – let it out.” 

He rolled onto his side, taking her with him so they were stretched out side by side, noses touching, hands roaming and he _wanted_ to want her. Wanted to lose himself in the green of her eyes, drift down into the warmth and softness and steel that was Natasha Romanoff. 

Wanted to want. 

So easy to crush his lips against hers, pull her onto him and take, accept, everything she had to offer. 

But he doesn’t. Want. 

Not Natasha. 

But he does want. Oh, how he _wants_. But is he wanted? 

Shame boiled up in him as he realized what he’d done, no better than Bucky’d done all those years ago with that parade of girls he wasn’t really interested in, window dressing and camouflage. And she was there, now, to hold back the panic, stare down the self-loathing, contain the fear. 

Natasha held his hand in one of her tiny hands – how does she do that? His hands are the size of dinner plates now, like everything about him, oversized and a ridiculous parody of who he’d been. Her other hand gripped his chin in an iron grip as she commanded him to look at her. “I regret nothing. How can you know what you really want if you never know anything else?” 

“You’re not cheesecake.” 

“No. But that sounds good, and you’re buying, Rogers. Unless you’re baking?” she asked hopefully. 

He collapsed back against her, laughing. “Nah. But there’s a diner not far from here that does all their own baking, and they make a killer cup of real coffee – none of that frou-frou stuff.” He rolled to his feet and stood in one relatively smooth motion, and held out his hand to her. “My treat.” 

“Damn straight. Feed me now, and then talk to that beautiful assassin of yours, Rogers. Or better, don’t talk. Act.” 

**Author's Note:**

> Comments are the air that I breathe! Please let me know what you think!


End file.
